Thursday, December 18, 2014

The results are out. Durham University's Law School is ranked 3rd nationally in the UK's Research Excellence Framework 2014 exercise. This is a major review of research quality assessing 'outputs' (publications), research environment and impact. Durham ranks behind only KCL and LSE.

Needless to say, I'm thrilled to see my department perform so well and my congratulations to colleagues at other departments that also enjoyed good news this morning. The news isn't good for everyone - inevitable in any ranking where some will come top and others bottom. In particular, departments where research outputs are 50% or more at 1* and 2* will need to reassess their strategies for 2020. No doubt special attention will also be given to close scrutiny of impact case study narratives at competitor institutions - although having read Durham Law School's impact case studies, I'm unsurprised to see them score so strongly.

These results matter for several reasons. The next exercise is not until 2020 so these rankings will be used to allocate QR funding to universities and inform league tables. But most importantly, these results are a confirmation of the research excellence found throughout the British university sector. The full results for all subjects can be found here.

Thom Brooks

About Me

I'm Professor of Law and Government at Durham University's Law School. I'm also Associate Member of the Philosophy Department. I'm originally from New Haven, Connecticut and currently a Visiting Fellow at Yale Law School. I've previously held visiting positions at Oxford, St Andrews and Uppsala and previously taught at Newcastle University. I'm founding editor of the Journal of Moral Philosophy which I started in 2003 while a graduate student.

My current research interests are immigration law and policy (esp citizenship) and sentencing law and policy (esp theories of punishment and the use of sentencing guidelines). I'm also working on the capabilities approach and global justice as well as my longstanding interests in the work of Hegel and the British Idealists.